Webinars

Noticing a proliferation of offers of online presentations of all sorts, recently I decided to take advantage of some of them, especially the free ones, regarding subjects of my interest and mostly related to my work.

They are usually about one hour long and one has to register in advance to participate, when scheduled. They are not interactive, but one can submit written questions, via a chat format, to a moderator that will then address them for a proper answer from the speaker(s). Although I realize that such offers are done to attract customers, the ones I participated in so far have been surprisingly worth while, and very informative; thus, the good experience I realized from them has overcome my initial skepticism of possibly being involved only in advertising.

What I also appreciate is that if one cannot participate, once registered, the audio and visual presentations are made available later on, online, coupled by email offers of answering additional questions, if necessary, and soliciting feedback evaluations.

Last night I had an even more pleasurable experience of this type from Roots Magic, the software that I use to maintain my family data base. I cannot dedicate much time to my hobby of genealogy, but, once in a blue moon, I add more data to the large collection I started a few years ago, when this software was supplied by Family Origins. They share the same author, who changed the package name when he greatly expanded this application that now offers quite a few sophisticated features.

Yesterday I decided to reload this software that I had registered in the past, but lost last year when my computer system was restructured. At the supplier's site I discovered that the author started, since this January, to conduct regular online presentations about his product. Therefore, I further decided to refresh my knowledge about its use by viewing the first introductory webinar.

It was the best 75 minutes spent (re)learning something I thought I knew, and was flabbergasted by the in-depth and thorough coverage of all the basic features, with step by step visual examples and explanations! Wish that some bigger suppliers of hardware and/or software could learn to imitate what this smaller company is doing in the field of online presentations. Kudos to Roots Magic and its author!